PHNOM PENH, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Military police in northwest Cambodia's Preah Vihear province have seized 1.02 tons of illicit drug smuggled from a neighboring country, a senior military police official said on Tuesday.

Brigadier Geneal Kang Saokun, chief of the Preah Vihear Provincial Military Police, said the drug was found in an SUV car that had been abandoned in Chey Saen district on the night of Jan. 20.

He said the suspects, who were transporting the drug across the border from a neighboring country, abandoned the car and fled into a nearby forest after they were spotted by provincial military police officers who patrolled the area.

"A total of 1,020 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine was seized, and we are hunting for the suspect(s)," he told Xinhua.

Cambodia has seen a spike in the number of people arrested for drug involvement despite a drop in the amount of narcotics seized in 2023, according to an Anti-Drug Police Department (ADP)'s report.

The authorities had detained 19,940 drug-related suspects last year, up 35 percent from 14,784 a year earlier, the report said, adding that 499 of the detainees were foreigners of 17 nationalities.

A total of 2.97 tons of all kinds of illicit drugs had been confiscated from the suspects' possession during the crackdowns from January to December 2023, the report said.

The seized drugs included heroin, ecstasy, ketamine, nimetazepam, cocaine, crystal methamphetamine, methamphetamine pills, and cathinone, among others.

The Southeast Asian country has no death sentence for illicit drug traffickers. Under its law, those found guilty of trafficking more than 80 grams of illicit drugs could be imprisoned for life. Enditem

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